


But Lovers Do

by shatou



Series: Prayer Song [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bottom Anakin Skywalker, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Top Obi-Wan Kenobi, bullshitted space battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25036252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatou/pseuds/shatou
Summary: All they have is each other. Together, though, they have a little something more.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Prayer Song [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813123
Comments: 30
Kudos: 238





	But Lovers Do

“General Skywalker, are you singing?”

Anakin snaps out of his reverie. Kriff, he should’ve paid attention. It’s a tune that Obi-Wan usually hums. It’s his alone to hear. Anakin is very nearly a little mad at himself for letting someone else hear it. These days it’s on his mind more often than not. Especially when Obi-Wan and he are apart, on either ends of the galaxy, fighting for the Republic, fighting for the day they reunite. It keeps the memory of their nights together warm like yesterday.

He turns to his captain with full intention of denial. “It’s called _humming_ , Rex. I don’t sing.”

“Singing, humming, whatever,” the clone waves his hand, and cocks a smile. “That’s a Mandalorian song.”

“A _what_?”

Rex nods, his smile growing wide and meaningful. “Mandalorian song. A very old one. You don’t hear it often these days, especially not outside of Mandalore. Where’d you get it?”

Anakin shrugs, spine tingling with heat, betrayal curling in his chest. So Rex already knows the song. That shouldn’t have made it any less special, but… still. He leans against the frame of the viewport, shooting back an off-kilter smile. “Don’t know. Probably picked it up somewhere.”

“Impossible, sir.” Rex crosses his arm, shaking his head. He looks like he’s chewing the inside of his cheeks to bite back laughter. “It’s a discreet sort of song. You can’t just—“

“What are the words?” Anakin cuts in, a little breathless. _A discreet sort of song._ Rex laughs now, a warm, belly-deep laugh, and uncrosses his arms to place a sympathetic hand on Anakin’s shoulder.

“I knew it.” His eyes gleam, head tilted the way he does when he has a good kill. “C’mon General, spill it. Who sung it to you?”

“Nobody.” Anakin scoffs. “Told you I picked it up somewhere.”

“But you still want to know what it means.”

“Can’t I just be curious?” And by hell, he’s curious. A _Mandalorian_ song? Must have come from that one year of extended mission...

“With all due respect, sir, I’m not telling you until you tell me who you got it from.”

So Rex intends to be difficult. Anakin juts his chin out. “Rex, as your General I order you to tell me.”

“You’ll have to pry the secret from my cold dead hands I’m afraid.” Rex grins, pats him on that shoulder, and recedes. “In any case, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket and I’m not the best person to translate it to Basic, either.”

Anakin groans. “Fine. _Fine_ , I’ll just ask Echo then.”

“Suit yourself, General.”

A day and half a battle later when Anakin finds the time to pull Echo aside in the mess. The guy is nearly always with his squad, it’s a feat to single him out. Worse, they can’t stay in the mess. Anakin motions Echo to a more desert corner of the corridor.

“Hey, uh, so I’ve got this Mandalorian song that I heard somewhere,” Anakin begins. Echo goes from nervousness to confusion, brows furrowed. He probably thinks there’s some hidden meaning to decipher and Anakin wouldn’t blame him. “I’m looking for the lyrics. Can you give it a go?”

“Yes, sir. Go ahead, sir.”

Anakin nods. He starts whistling the tune right away, pouring the high note into the low with care. The melody’s got some tricky up-and-down parts, but he loves it all the more for it. It ends quick, just a four-line verse. “Well?”

For all it’s worth, Echo looks like he’s blushing a bit. “It’s a love song, sir.”

Oh. Anakin blinks, and then smiles. Echo’s brows shoot towards his hairline. Kriff, he must be suspecting something now, if Rex’s words are anything to go by. A _discreet sort_ of love song. Anakin nods, as dismissive and casual as he can manage. “A love song, huh.”

“Yes, sir. Old tradition back in the days of the warriors. It’s for wedding nights, when someone marries a warrior. Ah, doesn’t have to be weddings,” Echo adds, hastily. “For departures and reunions too. Just— just a love song for the soldiers, sir.”

“I thought soldiers don’t sing,” Anakin says, half teasing.

“Aye, but lovers do.”

“Do you know the words?”

To his delight, the clone nods. “I can’t really sing, sir. I can write it down for you if you’d like.”

Anakin smiles, clasps Echo on the shoulder. “I don’t know Mando’a. Can you translate too?”

“Sure thing, sir. There’s a Basic version, I think. Just give me a minute and I’ll look it up.”

This is going very well, Anakin thinks. He walks down the corridor, whistling to himself, and then stopping short when he remembers he’s in everyone’s earshot. He picks another song, a random earworm he’d heard some of the clones play on their radios from time to time. He wraps the Mandalorian love song in his heart, and waits eagerly for the lyrics.

—

Anakin’s grips blanch on the steerer. Momentum punches him back into the pilot seat and sloshes him all the way to the right, belts cutting into his torso, as his fighter veers to the left. Behind him is his squad, still intact, and below them, enemy ships fire without mercy. Not that they’ve ever asked for any. He’s glad Ahsoka is elsewhere, at least. 

“Blue squadron is down,” grits a voice from control center. Anakin curses quietly. They can make it. Grievous is down there, cackling in his bridge. How many times have they let that cowardly walking bulk of scrap metal get away? Not this time. He thinks of the song, and it lights up his heart.

“General Skywalker, I implore you—“ Admiral Yularen begins, but Anakin cuts in.

“We’ve got this. Red squadron, follow my lead.”

Several _Yes, sir_ chime in an unsuccessful chorus.

They’re so close. They’re opening fire themselves, little starfighter blasts that do little to the enormous starship beside denting the shell. Damage not the aim. “Rex, do you copy?”

“Yes, sir,” Rex answers, voice tinny in the transmission.

“Take green and yellow, spread them out and guard the escape pods.” His starfighter nearly flips to the side, just in time to avoid a blast. “Secure them all.”

“Sir, that means no one’s got your back.”

R2 shrieks in unison, having overheard the conversation. _Sorry, buddy_ , Anakin thinks.

“I know.”

“General,” Admiral Yularen pipes up again from control center, aghast. “You can’t use yourself as a _distraction_.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Anakin tosses back a low laughter. “Alright, red squadron, skip the guns. We aim for the bridge.”

They glide over barrel after barrel after barrel, zigzagging past an upside-down rain of massive blaster bolts. When he was a child, Anakin saw fireworks once. He’s always thought it was an ugly thing, booming too loud and bursting too bright. Isn’t the heat of the day enough already? Why ruin the night sky with man-made fire? He tears his eyes away from the macabre spectacles of plasma shots and exploding metal before him. His monitor beeps, sensors signaling that the bridge has come within firing range.

At the same time, a cannon slowly charges right beneath his fighter.

_The clones._ “Red squadron, disperse,” Anakin shouts into the receiver. “Get away from that cannon. Move! Do _not_ follow me.”

He can only hope they move. He stays within range, and aims for the bridge, and just as he hits fire, the cannon fires at him.

—

_I fear no sunset..._

When Anakin opens his eyes again, he sees the ceiling of the medbay.

He thinks he’s been hearing something too - a melody, a song someone sings - but maybe it’s just his imagination. He flexes his fingers, then his arm, then bends his elbows to brace his hands on the mattress and props himself up. He feels… surprisingly fresh, and fine, aside from the itch of a bacta patch plastered over his stomach. It’s the monitors that are the problem, going off as soon as he tugs himself free of the electrode pads and tubes and whatnot. He hears someone rushing to him, but the beeping is loud and overwhelming enough to blacken his vision.

“Make it stop,” he croaks out, and when it does finally, he looks up to find Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, not armor-clad, stray auburn locks fraying out of his usual immaculately combed back hair. The heart rate monitor picks up its pace.

“Master,” Anakin smiles, if only barely. Obi-Wan doesn’t smile back.

“What were you thinking— Were you _thinking_ at all?” Obi-Wan whisper-shouts, brows pinched. He slumps down into his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Diving right in front of a cannon... You could have gotten yourself killed out there.”

“Not the first time,” Anakin says, out of contrariness only, and he gets the desired effect of a withering glare from his old master. “Did we get Grievous?”

Obi-Wan looks up. He doesn’t have to say a word; his hesitation is enough. Anakin’s face falls. He glances down, frowning, grim. He plucks at a loose thread from the bandages around his forehead. They’re silent for a while.

Then there’s a hand in his hair, combing through the locks, fingertips massaging into his scalp all the way to the base of his skull. Anakin sighs, leans into the touch. Obi-Wan’s hand lingers at his nape, before smoothing a long, slow line down his spine, and comes to rest on his lower back. It’s so warm, too warm, with only a layer of tunic between skin and skin. Anakin’s whole body relaxes; his flesh hand gropes across the blanket to find Obi-Wan’s free hand. He brings it to his lips, kisses a scarred knuckle, trails more kisses towards the wrist.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says warningly, as Anakin begins to peel back his sleeve and press his lips on his pulse. He gently twists his hand out of Anakin’s grip in favor of cupping his face in both palms. Anakin looks to him as prompted.

“You need to rest,” Obi-Wan says, not quite so firmly.

“No,” Anakin says, “I need you.” He reaches up, palm fitted just beneath Obi-Wan’s jaw. His beard is scratchy against his skin and Anakin shivers at the memory of it scraping along his thigh.

His Master seems scandalized. “Not here, Anakin.” And yet he too tilts into Anakin’s touch, as Anakin brushes a thumb over his cheekbone. There’s a little scratch there.

“Why? Nobody’s here.” He leans forward, close enough to hear Obi-Wan’s bated breaths.

“ _Anybody_ can be here at any moment.” 

“Not if you lock that door.”

Obi-Wan sighs, defeated. His chair scrapes against the floor as he pulls himself closer to the bed. “You’re injured.”

“Well, you aren’t.”

“ _Anakin._ ”

“Wait, are you?” Anakin frowns, the metaphorical record-scratch zapping to a halt in his mind. Obi-Wan _seems_ fine, but he knows his Master too well. Immediately Anakin reaches into the remainder of their training bond, prods along the signature for signs of distress, physical or otherwise.

Obi-Wan softens. “Peace, Anakin, I’m all right.” Reassurance seeps through their bond, and as though deeming it not enough, he grants Anakin a kiss on the temple. “I just don’t want you to overexert yourself.” His voice is tight, thin, barely contained.

“I’m fine,” Anakin insists. His voice wavers, almost watery. “I want… I missed you, Master.” He looks up from under his lashes. “Please?”

The door’s lock slides and clicks. Anakin leans past the perimeters of his bed to kiss him on the lips, hanging onto Obi-Wan’s frame with an arm wrapped around one shoulder. Obi-Wan tilts his head and gentles him with a tongue along his mouth. Calloused hands traced over Anakin’s waist and shoulder, keeping him upright. Little sighs and moans slides heated between mouths, and when Anakin strays from Obi-Wan’s lips to kiss under his jaw, he’s stilled with a firm, “No.”

Before he can even look hurt, Obi-Wan’s lips are on his neck, kissing from below his ear to his pulse point. Anakin groans, surprised, as he’s pushed back and back, while Obi-Wan’s mouth roves down to his clavicle, as far down as the patient tunic allows. “Lay on your side,” Obi-Wan whispers, fingering the knot that holds his tunic together. For once in a century, Anakin can obey direct orders.

Clothes rustles, something crinkles, and the bed dips behind him. Obi-Wan’s lips are on him once more, kisses and light nips scattering from the column of his throat to the crook of his neck. His arms curl around Anakin’s waist. _He’s still clothed_ , Anakin blearily registers from the press of Obi-Wan’s chest to his back, _and I’m not_. He breathes out a hoarse _Master,_ hips pressing back because he knows, oh he knows, the cadence of Obi-Wan’s breaths. Sure enough he feels Obi-Wan’s cock, hard in his trousers, and he reaches back.

“Be good,” Obi-Wan chides quietly into his ears. His hand wraps around Anakin’s cock before Anakin reaches his. Beard scrapes against his neck and teeth graze his earlobe. Anakin arcs back, all temptation forgotten. He bites his lip and lets out a helpless noise as Obi-Wan strokes him languidly.

“I want more,” Anakin finds the wherewithal to gasp.

Obi-Wan answers him with a bruising kiss on the shoulder and a thumb sliding over his slit. Anakin moans, and his Master chuckles against skin. “I missed you as well.”

“Funny,” he deadpans just seconds before Obi-Wan’s hand pulls away from his cock and his voice slides into a whine. The bacta packet tears and crinkles. Slicked fingers ghosts up the back of his thigh. Anakin parts his legs, air shuddering out of his lungs. He’s overheated and dizzy with want, fingers clawing into the mattress. He shudders as a finger breaches his body, sobs at the second, and Obi-Wan’s other arm goes snug around his body.

“Easy now,” Obi-Wan hushes him, kisses the back of his ear like it’s nothing. Anakin nods. His body remembers, but it has forgotten just how much it craves, and now he’s left trembling against Obi-Wan’s chest, writhing on just his fingers alone. His heart gallops in his chest. He cants his hips and moans again when the angle changes, his legs twisting into the blanket.

“Master…”

“Force be good, Anakin, when you say it that way,” his Master whispers. Anakin can’t see, but he can imagine the shade of red on Obi-Wan’s face right now. Even their bond is tinted with embarrassment. Endearing, isn’t it? How some things never change, even after so many times; so many nights they’ve snatched…

Obi-Wan pulls out, hand sliding along the inside of Anakin’s thigh, easing it up along the way. He lines them up and pushes in, and Anakin sees white-hot pleasure behind closed eyes. Obi-Wan grips his thigh, holds him close, anchors him; _Good, Anakin_ , and _You’re alright_ and _I’ve got you_ , and a smattering of little kisses as he thrusts into him. Anakin rolls his hips back, deaf to his own sounds, even as Obi-Wan shushes him gently like he always does. He feels fit to reverberate out of his own skin. Every beat of pressure draws out a note from him, a gasp, a cry, a keen, and he’s messy and sobbing and coming into his barely moving hand while Obi-Wan drives into him without so much as quiet little grunts.

Their bodies move against one another like they’re made to. Obi-Wan comes inside him with his name on his tongue. _Anakin_ , just the one murmur. 

They lay like that for a while longer, content with the locked doors and deactivated medical droids, sated in the aftermath of their passion. Anakin turns around in Obi-Wan’s arms. He’s greeted with a kiss on the lips. He smiles into it. “I love you,” he says, coming back for another kiss. A fleeting, sweet little thing, just their lips pillowing against each other. “I love you, Master,” he whispers again.

“I know.”

And then Obi-Wan hums, that tune he knows, and Anakin pipes up, too happy not to grin. “What’s that song?”

Obi-Wan cocks a brow. “Just… some song, I suppose.”

_Some song._ Anakin nuzzles his nose against Obi-Wan’s cheek, and pecks the corner of his lips. “Can you sing it?” He kisses Obi-Wan before the refusal comes. “I want to hear your voice, Master.”

His request is met with a considering silence, until his Master laughs quietly and bumps their nose together and calls Anakin the death of him. So Obi-Wan sings, quietly, in Mando’a. Because of course he would. Of course he would conceal his words in a language Anakin does not speak, would not understand. Of course his hand would stray down Anakin’s back all the while, fingers tracing the knobs of his spine.

_I fear no sunset, for you are my light  
_ _Your songs guide me through the night  
_ _And as the sea loves the moon,  
_ _I love you, through this tune._

_I love you, through this tune…_ _  
_

Anakin mouths the words in Basic, and falls asleep singing the soldier’s love song.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you want to hear what the tune might sound like, here’s a [demo](https://soundcloud.com/racine-carr-e/as-the-sea-loves-the-moon) of mine.
> 
> Here is the Mando’a version by [Seyasoya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seyasoya/pseuds/Seyasoya).
> 
> _Ni chaab nu tran'trattok, par gar ner nau_  
>  _Gar laam yustali ni adol ca_  
>  _Bal sa shonar kar'tayli me'suum'ika_  
>  _Ni kar'tayli gar, adol ibik laar'ika_  
> 
> 
> _Ni kar'tayli gar, adol ibik laar'ika_
> 
> And another [demo](https://soundcloud.com/racine-carr-e/sa-shonar-kartayli-mesuumika) I recorded.  
> (Sorry for the butchered Mando’a, I’m about at Anakin’s level of Mando’a - which is to say, non-existent.)
> 
> Comments are really welcomed!


End file.
